Boards and CEOs
Board-ready executive search starts before outreach
How boards and CEOs can define the leadership brief, evidence model, and candidate narrative before entering the market.
Start with the business inflection
The best executive searches begin with the board's unresolved question: scale, turnaround, succession, market entry, or transformation. The role specification should describe that question clearly. A brief that could belong to any company at any stage will produce a shortlist with the same problem.
Separate credentials from evidence
Titles and logos can be useful signals, but the shortlist should be built around observed leadership behavior, operating context, and tradeoff readiness. The most common failure in senior hiring is treating a strong résumé as evidence of the specific capability the role requires.
Agree the evidence model in writing
Before any approach is made, the sponsor and the search partner should agree what evidence would satisfy them on each critical requirement. This single document prevents the slow drift in criteria that turns a six-week search into a six-month one.
Protect the candidate narrative
Senior candidates engage when the mandate is credible, confidential, and clear. Outreach should reflect the ambition and seriousness of the opportunity. The strongest leaders in any market are not reading job postings, and they judge the opportunity partly by how it was presented to them.
